Officials from NASA and SpaceX stated Thursday that the Crew-4 mission will be delayed by one day due to a busy launch schedule.
The forthcoming SpaceX Crew-4 mission will transport three NASA astronauts and one European Space Agency astronaut to the International Space Station, where they will live and work in Earth orbit.
The launch of Crew-4 has been pushed back from Apr. 19 to Apr. 20, according to Steve Stich, the manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program at the agency's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Texas.
This will give more time between this mission and Axiom Space's Ax-1 mission, which will launch a private astronaut crew to the station on April 6 aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule, according to Stich.
"We are in the midst of an extremely busy spring," Dana Weigel, deputy manager for NASA's International Space Station program at JSC, added during the same news conference.
NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren (mission commander), Bob Hines (pilot), and Jessica Watkins (mission specialist), as well as Italian ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti (mission specialist), will fly on Crew-4 .
Cristoforetti and Lindgren will be making their second spaceflight, while Watkins and Hines will be making their first. The crew will fly aboard a brand-new Dragon capsule, the fourth SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle, which the crew has named Freedom. Lindgren also noted, during a news conference with the mission's crew that occurred later today, that the mission patch, which features a dragonfly, was designed by his daughter.
Watkins will be the first Black woman to fly in space for an extended period of time with this mission.
This will most likely be the last new Dragon manufactured, as SpaceX intends for each Dragon to fly five times, for a total of 20 missions. (SpaceX also has seven Dragon vehicles outfitted for robotic cargo transfer.) The objective is for these vehicles to last until the ISS retires in 2030, according to Jessica Jensen, vice president of customer operations and integration at SpaceX, during today's news conference.
SpaceX is creating a massive vehicle called Starship that will transport passengers and goods to the moon, Mars, and other distant locations.
Crew-4 will join a group of astronauts already on board the station. There will be 11 crew members on board during the five-day handover period following their arrival on station - six Americans, three Russians, one German astronaut, and one Italian astronaut, according to Jensen.
And this work will "further some of the capabilities that we need for going beyond low-Earth orbit. It also brings a lot of benefits to us here on Earth. I think station is ready to welcome Crew-4," Jensen said.
